Third time's the charm - Mardoc plays the Pirates [SPOILER]

[Mardoc]

Are you sure on that? I'm pretty sure I had mining platforms built in the trenches.

Hmm. Looking at the 'pedia again, I think you're right. Because it looks like Trenches are a feature, not a base terrain type. Can't plant Kelp on them, but I don't see a reason why Mining Platforms shouldn't work.

Which is lovely, our Ocean Trenches will eventually be 5 hammers apiece.

[spellman]

Oh, my. I'm not sure just how much editing spellman did for us, but this looks lovely! A nice solid trench for early hammers, fairly easy access to a pair of Planet-boosting resources (the artifact and the monolith) plus two more that we'll get with time (the Planet Pearls and the Brilliance).

Not too much as it turns out. So there's a high likelihood at least one person will rage at me for their start relative to others.

[HidingKneel]

Definitely agree with putting the capital at C1.

C2 I'm not so sure about. What do you think about 1E of C2?
How much movement do sea colony pods get?

Algaculture first makes sense, but I'm not sure what the alternatives are (I've only started in the arrival era). If you post the save I'll poke around at them and offer my learned wisdom .

[Mardoc]

Definitely agree with putting the capital at C1.

C2 I'm not so sure about. Spot looks so-so, but I don't see anything that looks much better. How much movement do sea colony pods get? Maybe send one in that direction, and see what your scouting turns up next turn.

That's about what I was thinking, yes. Sea colony pods have three movement, so we can't found that city this turn no matter what. I just don't want to get the cities too far separated, or wait too long, is all.

Perhaps I'll make a point of exploring west next turn, that seems to be the other reasonable alternative.

Edit: Oh, one more thing. Sea colony pods are buildable for us from the start, while everyone else has to research up to Pressure Dome. And they're 79 hammers on quick, much cheaper than FFH. So I suspect my instincts will be a bit off.

Algaculture first makes sense, but I'm not sure what the alternatives are (I've only started in the arrival era). If you post the save I'll poke around at them and offer my learned wisdom .

Here you go, Oh Wise Master and All-Knowing Sage. Password is "R".

I suspect Sian would be perfectly willing to tie you into the tracker, if you'd like - you too, Bigger. Interested?

[HidingKneel]

Sure, add me to the tracker (won't be able to look at it until tonight, though).

[Mardoc]

(won't be able to look at it until tonight, though).

I think I'll go ahead and finish the turn, then. We've got agreement on city 1, and city2 will take some travelling time anyway.

What do we need to build first? My gut says we'd want the Human Genome Project, but only if we think we can get it. Extra health would be lovely, extra science and bulb potential would be too. Alternately, we could put up some regular infrastructure. A Bio lab to boost both health and Planet rating, or a Hydro Plant for pure health, or maybe just a Children's Creche? We probably shouldn't be going for a colony pod here just yet, too many tiles to work.

PF1 Spoiler

Bulb list from Sareln's thread:


Should come back to this later, and see what a Great Doctor or Great Scientist can buy us.

Hmm. Actually, on second thought - that Trench might be the best way to get ourselves a HGP of our very own, but we'd want it in city2 if we go that route. I don't think there exist any 3 hammer tiles at the start of the game aside from our lovely ocean trenches; certainly not any 3-hammer tiles that also provide food. I'm willing to slow the growth of a city for the wonder, but I'd prefer it be a city that doesn't have five distinct high-energy tiles to grow into.

Here's our capital, not renamed yet. Need to decide on a fun Piratey naming scheme.

Note that we get a free Naval Fortress Bunker. That surprised me, I might have waited a turn and had the other base be our capital, if I'd realized the range we'd have. Should be useful, regardless. I think our remaining bunkers will have to be handbuilt, or come via Perimeter Defenses. I wonder if all Pirate bunkers get Naval Fortress for free, or just this one?

[Selrahc]

Here's our capital, not renamed yet. Need to decide on a fun Piratey naming scheme.

Given that you've already run two pirate games, and gone with both "Hackers" and "Pirates", maybe you should widen the field a bit to a wider Maritime theme?


I'd suggest going for a naval tactics/strategy theme.

Some potential names...

Fleet in Being
Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
Guerre De Course
Carrier Fleet
Naval Dominance
Letter of Marque
Wolf Pack
Battlespace
Q-Ship
Dreadnought Squadron
Blockade
Sea Fortress
Line of Battle

It's a little eclectic, but I think it could fill a naming scheme. Famous admirals and sailors for units.

[Mardoc]

I'd suggest going for a naval tactics/strategy theme.

Promising. The only hesitation I have is whether I can come up with enough names off the top of my head to fill the empire I intend to build .

In other news, let's consider our competition, shall we? First up, the faction I considered as my 2nd choice, Sareln's Consciousness:


Now, that's a long list of bonuses! From most important to least, as per my entirely untrained guesses:

• Is granted all Technologies known by four other factions. This wouldn't matter much if we were just playing with the humans, but we've got a bunch of Emperor level AI's along, too. Sareln could go the whole game without researching a single thing, I suspect.
  
• No Anarchy. He'll not lose the turns we will getting into nice civics.
  
• No Distance maintenance
  
• Cybercore and Cybernexus (+50% to everything generated by two bases but Food)
  
• Transcend and Datajacks (not at all the hardest Great People to make, he can build Network Nodes already and start working on his first Datajack) get +6 bpt. This isn't quite as bad as I first thought, it's not Empaths and Librarians, it's Transcends and Datajacks. Although it's really +9, there's no reason for him to settle them anywhere without a Cybercore
  
• 25% less Planet anger from population
  

"Compensated" by two penaties:

• no free +1 Planet, which I believe no one has anymore regardless
  
• and not automatically a member of the Council.
  

What do I expect this to mean? Well...Sareln's probably the tall poppy here. He can do a stellar Planet-hugging game with the bonuses to Transcends and planet anger, or a stellar terraforming game focused on getting the most from his Cybercore and Cybernexus. He can focus on deep beelines, counting on his bonus to keep him up to date on the cheaper techs.

What can't he do? Well...I don't expect him to be a warmonger. He'd really rather keep everyone alive to to feed him tech. It's not his personality, regardless. I'm not convinced he'll want to challenge us at sea, either. Not a lot of extra food for a non-pirate to run millions of librarians and empaths.

And more urgently, I suspect he won't challenge us for the Genome Project. Granted, a Great Doctor would be the fastest way to Memetics, which unlocks the Cybercore for him. But in his shoes, I don't think I'd want to waste GPP for bulbs, not when I could have such nice bonuses from settling them. Well - hmm. Memetics is definitely his most valuable tech early on. Maybe he would gamble on the chance of a Scientist instead, on the hopes of cutting his time without Cybercore dramaticallly.

Really, all things considered, Sareln would make a decent ally for us. We just need to be sure that we're bigger than him, and ahead in the demos, and perhaps kill off a few of the AI's he plans to mooch from. If Iskender doesn't do so first, of course .

Or, more likely, Sareln will make an excellent tall poppy, for everyone else to focus on restraining while we grow.

[Mardoc]

Next up, Maniac's Datagrrl:


Compared to the Consciousness, straightforward. Several nice bonuses toward running an Espionage economy - in particular the +75% EP and dramatic bonus toward happiness for running the slider. I can't quite decide how important the 'mobile hideouts' and cash rushing units abilities are: on the one hand, attacking Maniac won't hurt him much until the end; on the other, they only come into play if he's losing a war. Which is hardly the position he wants to be in! On the third hand - it might be possible to steal and pillage a base of his without making a mortal enemy.

If Sareln wants to piggyback his tech off everyone else, Maniac wants to do the same. Or, more likely, piggyback his tech off just one person. My gut says that won't work out in the long run, even if his target chooses to not run counterespionage. But I could be wrong, he might save enough effort on tech to be able to apply it to war instead. In particular, if espionage is efficient enough for him, he'll have lots of cash left over to rush units with.

I could definitely imagine a throwaway base founding, though - found a base up in our grill, precisely to rush a bunch of units in, maybe a few relevant bits of infra (like a perimeter defense), but not worry about losing it. I think there was something I saw about being able to build more than one unit at a time, too.

Short term, I would expect him to head straight for Planetary Networks, to start building Probe Teams, and NanoMiniaturization afterward to turn his espionage slider on. That might be all the teching he does for himself, or he might resort to some after all - depends on the efficiency, I suppose.

Ah, what else? No bonuses or penalties pushing either toward or away from Planet. Except maybe the question of who he finds to steal from first .

[Bigger]

yeah, add me to the tracker. I cant play it at the moment, but by the time our empire has grown ill have the mod downloaded and be able to open it up and look around .